What are your thoughts about travel in the time of Covid?

Yes, when there was huge shortage of rental cars and very high prices, people on Oahu were renting from uhaul, whatever they could. Fortunately it is located near the airport so they could catch some transit or a taxi to pick it up and then would have a means of getting around thereafter.

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Yes, that’s what she’s hoping.

I thought about renting a UHaul once, is the price decent or expensive?

Price at U-Haul in Canada is low but you have to pay CAD $.59 or $.69 per mile. Also, I normally don’t get insurance as my Chase Sapphire Reserve provides primary insurance (or Amex Plat has a $20 insurance charge). But, neither covered U-Haul. So I had to pay $380(?) for insurance.

I think the truck would have been cheaper but we would have been thinking about it every time we made a trip.

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ARGGHHHH!!!

For weeks tour company advised us to get the Binax kits with online monitor, as getting COVID test to come home would be our responsibility. So here we are less than 2 weeks away, and I sprung for the kits this week.

NOW—we get an email from our tour manager welcoming us on the tour, etc., etc., and she mentions that NO WORRIES, THE TOUR COMPANY WILL BE ARRANGING FOR IN-HOTEL TESTING ON OUR LAST NIGHT!!! EASY PEASY!!! She suggests we do this instead of using the Binax proctored test.

Since we’re going to Scotland in the fall, God forbid if the rules don’t change, I guess we can use the Binax kits then (unless this DIFFERENT tour company changes its mind…).

My running gag has been that as soon as we bought the kits, the US would drop the testing rule. Instead, as soon as we bought the kits, the travel company decided to make all the testing arrangements for us–for a fee, of course.

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Here is a hack with the free tests, I received a few recently
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/free-tests-biden-international-travel/

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Totally. We had 4 tickets on United to go visit CU Boulder for D22’s admitted students’ weekend. A few weeks before the trip she decided to remove Boulder from contention, so I canceled the flights. 4 tickets at that time cost $1,900. I thought, “great, we can use that toward our trip to the PNW this summer.” I wasn’t able to actually book travel yet because so many things were up in the air still with where D would commit and my son’s summer schedule. As of today, the 4 tickets on United would cost $4,500. Our other choice is a 3-4 day drive each way and there’s no way H or I could take that time off.

I’ve been searching all kinds of dates. We do have some flexibilty, about 1 month of dates that will work. Nothing comes up under $816 right now for non-stop flights. I do have a couple of rules — I never fly Spirit or Frontier and will avoid stops and red eyes if at all possible. I’ve searched Kayak, Tripadvisor, United, American, Alaska, Southwest, etc. Seattle has always been more expensive to visit (I have family out there and went to college in WA, so going in and out of SEA and PDX has been pretty routine over the years), so that’s nothing new. But $1,200 for an economy basic fare? I’m pretty bummed about these options.

Not for your particular situation, but I’ve had some success using Google Flights:
https://www.google.com/travel/flights

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Definitely don’t give up, keep checking. I pretty much use the same rules you do, except to add that I always check Delta first. I really like Delta’s low fare calendar where you can find the cheapest dates without having to put them all in individually. Right now they have some direct flights ORD-SEA for $687 late July-early Aug, a little more if you go earlier. Not always the optimum flights (like leaving at 6am or arriving at midnight), but not too bad. I would think it would be far harder to find directs to PDX.

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@oldmom4896 Thanks for the link. I love how you can put in a country and get fares to all the major cities.

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With D moving into her dorm on 8/7 and S having two different week-long camps in mid + late July, we have a deadline of 7/9 unfortunately. It won’t be the end of the world if we can’t make this trip work, but it’s been 8 years since we visited the area, and definitely “our turn” to be the ones to travel to see all of the people there we miss dearly. We’ve been lucky the past few years to have family coming out this way instead.

It feels like the last bit of time when our 4 schedules will line up the right way other than winter break. Next summer who knows what D’s schedule will be like! She may have an internship, job, etc. I’m prepared to spend a lot, but hopefully closer to $700 or less each and not, $1,200! :money_mouth_face:

This is really handy, thanks!

Still check out Deltas calendar, if you really want to go. Direct flights from $718-$758 late June to SEA. I’d actually be more concerned about rental car costs, if you were renting one.

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Seattle car rentals are nuts. I just priced out a rental for a bunch of guests coming to the wedding, and it was $100 a day at an off-airport location!!! The guests will be Ubering to where the venue shuttle will pick them up. We already paid for the shuttle.

If one needs to get downtown from SEA, light rail is quite good and mostly reliable. The downtown situation is a different story.

Use that code I gave and pay less than half.

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Thanks! We found a better solution: my husband cleared the $&!т out of his truck, so it can now sit 5 instead of 2 plus shovels, tarps, and brooms. :slight_smile:

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What’s that code again?

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XZ41PGA

Put that in the Account# box when you check reservations with National. Should give you at least 25% off lowest rate.

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What I noticed about the National cars, using the code above, was that they were really small. I like to rent smaller cars but not miniature ones.

I’m just sitting here in the middle of the night checking airfares. Southwest tickets dropped about $40 since yesterday for August dates. I’d like to go to the beach 2 weeks earlier, but to save $300 I’ll go mid-August.

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